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Translation to explain Episcopal tenets in Hmong

Words like "peace" and "mercy" are
vital to talking about Christianity. They're just two of many
English words difficult to translate smoothly as an evolving
Episcopal congregation tries to create a Hmong version of the
denomination's Book of Common Prayer.

"Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. You can see it is
important," said Cher Lor, a member of the congregation at Holy
Apostles, an Episcopal church in St. Paul that is the only
Hmong-majority congregation across the entire denomination. "But
the word mercy itself, we don't have in Hmong. So we are using
'hulb,' which is a concept something like love. We believe that is
the closest."

The Book of Common Prayer is the foundational text of the
Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Its roots
trace to the Church of England's split from Roman Catholicism in
the 16th century, and ever since it has dictated morning and
evening prayers, the rites of Holy Communion, baptism, marriage and
funeral services, and much more. It typically runs to about 1,000
pages.

"Far more than a service manual, it's an embodiment of our life
and our faith," said the Rev. William Bulson, the former pastor at
Holy Apostles who continues to lead the translation effort.

For Hmong Episcopalians to enter fully into the church's fold,
it's important that they have a Book of Common Prayer to call their
own. It's been a long and painstaking process, but necessary for a
mainline denomination struggling for relevance to new generations
of U.S. immigrants.

“Far more than a service manual, it's an embodiment of our life
and our faith.”

Rev. William Bulson

The unique status of Holy Apostles, a modest wood-and-concrete
parish on the working-class east side of Minnesota's capital city,
has earned special attention in the wider Episcopal Church. James
Jelinek, the Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, is retiring in
February, and he recently chose Holy Apostles as the site of his
last Sunday parish visit as bishop. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the
presiding bishop of the U.S. Episcopal Church, has also visited.

"Just in practical terms, if the Episcopal Church doesn't
adapt, it's going to die, and it should die," Jelinek said.

The Hmong are an Asian ethnic group who come mainly from Laos.
Tens of thousands of Hmong people fled in the late 1970s after a
Communist takeover of Laos, with the largest groups settling in
Minnesota, Wisconsin and California. In St. Paul, Hmong immigrants
have established their own institutions and businesses and won
political office.

The Hmong religious tradition has roots in animism, a belief in
spirits and connections between all living things. But various
Christian denominations have made inroads in converting the Hmong
in recent decades, with particular success by the Christian
Missionary Alliance, an Evangelical Protestant denomination, and by
Roman Catholicism.

St. Paul has deep Catholic roots, and many of its new Hmong
residents found a home in that church. But in 2004, not long after
the death of a priest popular with local Hmong Catholics, a group
of Hmong parishioners at St. Vincent De Paul went looking elsewhere
after disputes with another Hmong faction.

"We found that the Episcopal denomination is the closest to
Catholic," said Toua Vang, a member of Holy Apostles and the
translation team. Vang plans to enroll at Virginia Theological
Seminary this fall, a step that could lead to becoming the first
Hmong Episcopal pastor.

Translating to HmongAP Photo/Jim Mone

The group found its way to Holy Apostles, which was struggling
with declining membership. "We were at about 60 people on a
Sunday, and I remember in late 2004 the bishop told me, 'OK, we've
given it a good run, but you have until the end of 2005 to turn it
around or we're shutting you down,"' Bulson said.

Flash forward to 2010. The new pastor, the Rev. Letha
Wilson-Barnard, said Holy Apostles typically draws 130 to 160
people between its two Sunday services - one in English, the other
in Hmong.

A recent Sunday service showed a thriving congregation with a
sharp contrast: The few white parishioners were mostly late
middle-aged or older, but the Hmong parishioners were all ages.
Families with small children, teenagers, young adults, the
middle-aged and elderly all filled the pews.

Bulson's first move was to begin a translation of the Sunday
liturgy. In 2008 he secured a $30,000 grant from the United Thank
Offering for the bigger translation project (he and several
translators earn a small salary). He left Holy Apostles last
summer, after struggling to keep up with what he said was a
crushing workload, and now serves an Episcopal Church in a suburb
west of Minneapolis.

After a several-month break to adjust to his new job, Bulson
recently reconvened the translation sessions. Often it's just him
and Cher Lor sitting at Bulson's dining room table with books and a
laptop, puzzling over words and phrases.

Bulson called the Hmong language "tough, tough, tough." It
wasn't even written until about 50 years ago, when Western
missionaries in Laos set out to create one. Bulson said it's
particularly difficult to find words for abstract concepts, and
that it often takes three or four Hmong words to encompass one
English word.

One recent day, Bulson and Cher Lo were sweating over the Book
of Common Prayer's Baptism rites. And so "Blessed be God: Father,
Son and Holy Spirit" became "Peb cav txog Tswv Ntuj: Leej Tub
thiab Leej Ntuj Plig Ntshiab."

The team hopes to finish in a few months. Though most of Holy
Apostles' Hmong parishioners speak English, Wilson-Barnard said the
older ones don't. But the project, she said, still feels necessary.

"This is part of passing the language and the culture on to the
next generation, to expose them to that," Wilson-Barnard said.
"Some in the 20 to 30 age group, who were born here, the way
they're learning Hmong is through church. It's transmitting the
language and the culture."